Homonyms
by sodakey
Summary: Same nightmare, different meaning. A tag to Elephant’s Memory. Reid, Hotch, Morgan. Gen.


Summary: Same nightmare, different meaning. A tag to _Elephant's Memory_.

Disclaimer: Not mine

Author note: I'm not really a current fanfic writer or fandom participant. I barely make it to my email these days let alone elsewhere on the internet. However, I've been digging through my computer in preparation to finish cleaning up unfinished _Supernatural_ stuff, and I found several small _Criminal Minds_ snippets. I never posted them because I really hadn't watched the show all that much. I caught episodes here and there if it happened to be on in whatever random city I was in at the time, but it wasn't a regular thing. Even now there are many episodes I haven't seen, but right now I figure—why not? The story assumes you are familiar with the episode and characters referenced within. No beta.

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**Homonyms**

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Leaving Texas was a strange emotion. Though Owen Savage sat somewhere far below in a county jail, he stood with them on the plane like a ghost. Hovering at their elbows. Crawling under their skin. His memory becoming their memory. The job hadn't been a failure. The team had done good work. Intensive and exhaustive work on a case that ended with relief. But sleep on the plane came slowly, and when it arrived, was stooped low with the nightmares that it carried.

It showed him first a library. Then a hallway. Then the shadowed, foreboding smile that must have belonged to Harper Hillman.

The football field felt clumpy under his feet. Dry patches of grass were scattered across it, shining brown in the daylight. A cold heat tugged at the hairs on his arms and seeped into his bones.

The football team was there, crunching the clumps under their feet. A group of blond cheerleaders were giggling and cheering, making cat calls as the football players showed off in front of them and a random cluster of gawking teenagers by showing how far they could throw the books. The first edition copy of _War and Peace_ went the farthest, but all the books soared, soared like they were flying.

"_Take his pants,"_ somebody yelled, and slowly the images around him began to speed up. The shirt was already gone, flung up with the sweater-jacket over the crossbeam of the goal post where it would stay stuck, stretching hands never able to reach it or knock it back down. The oversized backpack was flapped open and emptied of its notebooks as it dragged.

Torn paper.

Broken glasses.

Skinnier than skinny body, pale, skin and bones, shivering in the Vegas winter sun.

"_Please don't, please don't, please don't."_ A trembling chin tipped downward, strands of brown hair dripping over dark set eyes. The cord around the shaking wrists was dirty white, thin, like it'd come from an unraveled basketball net. It pressed its pattern over the skin, chaffing where it caught too tight. The feet were tied with something else. Shoelaces freed from the green-striped Vans that were tossed back and forth between the kids before being hurled into the rocks up away from the bleachers, landing somewhere near the corduroys.

The laughter echoing around him grew loud. Absurdly loud.

Then someone threw a rock, a desert pebble that left an instant welt above the fragile hip bone and he could take no more. "STOP!" he roared. His gun was suddenly, instantly, in his hand. He stood in front of the goal post with his flack jacket on and the windbreaker that said FBI. The kids on the field all froze, heads turning to look at him. There was fear in their eyes and he was glad to see it for the moment that it mattered. After that, the rage was blinding, covering his vision in a white light.

"_Too late,"_ he said. His finger twitched against the trigger but the gun didn't make a sound. It twitched again, and again, and again.

"Morgan."

He couldn't hear anything, he couldn't see anyone, but he pulled and pulled and pulled…

"Derek," said Hotch.

His eyes came open. Hotch had one hand on his shoulder, the other gripping the wrist of his flailing hand. "Morgan, wake up."

Morgan blinked, felt the sights and sounds of the jet come into focus then heaved air, sitting forward in his seat while Hotch leaned back and slowly let him go. "Alright?" Hotch asked, perpetual serious expression etched deeper in his face.

Morgan nodded, taking another breath. "Just a dream."

Over Hotch's shoulder, Reid was watching from across the plane, seeming small in his seat, lips pulled together tightly, confusion in his eyes and nearly the same expression on his face that he'd had when he'd told Morgan, _"I remember it like it was yesterday." _

"Sure?" said Hotch, pulling Morgan's focus back to him.

"It's fine," said Morgan, tapping Hotch on the knee, sitting up straighter and settling back into his seat. "It's fine."

But it wasn't. It was Morgan's most vivid nightmare, just a different incarnation. The body of yet-another victim with her eyes wide open, or tiny Reid tied to a goal post. No matter who Derek Morgan ended up saving, it was always just a little too late for the ones he wanted to save the most.

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End

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